Where I'm headed, this mountain's home if only
for the moment, but what isn't? Pick-up roars
in low gear, Kingston Trio wailing, the road wet with hail
from a few minutes ago, small stones
pitched down by sky in a rush. Rustic is real--
food, fire, water-- thin roof and thicker roof
of stars--what matters is how one thrifts and spends
the heart, not how one snortles green.

I haul water for all of water's servings: cook, clean, brush,
steep tea, bathe with a washcloth, and
firewood for nights cold as comets--
enormous hailstones circling sun.
Afternoons like this, sick of cities
dead from the heart up, I push
and floor pedal, burn a quart of oil. Up here, folks say hello
and mostly mean it, aren't trying to slip their fingers
into your pockets or cut you off the road
down a bankment and boulders. After sundown,
the naked eye can only see 6,000 stars. With
a naked third eye, many more, like the visions
of deep space that come in sleep, Aham Vishnam--
I am the universe. We are all bigger
than what the world wants, flipping us off. This drive's
right as rain, hauling me to evening
where outspoken crows congregate
in the crowns of the pines under dusk's mountain light and I
unload the jugs, wood for splitting,
throw a blanket over the ringnecks and stoke
a blaze that'll last through dawn, a glow
through the wide window
bright enough stars could see
amid such mountains and mandala moons as these.

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